Freedom at Risk: Reflections on Politics, Liberty, and the State

James L. Buckley may be the only American alive who has held high office in each branch of the federal government as senator of New York, undersecretary of state under Ronald Reagan, and a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. His unique understanding of how Washington works equips him to address the intrusive and exponential growth of the federal government in the past forty years.

In Freedom at Risk, Buckley&;s collected essays, musings, and speeches tell the real story of why government is incapable of managing an economy, and why the transformation of the federal government into a centrally administered welfare state is undermining the critical safeguards that the Founders wrote into the Constitution.

Here, in a sober book of perceptive analysis spanning a lifetime in Washington, lies an outline of the steps that must be taken to save constitutional government, if that is still possible.

James L. Buckley was born in New York City in 1923, grew up in rural Connecticut, and received his B.A. degree from Yale. Following service as a naval officer in World War II, he returned to New Haven to secure his law degree. After several years in private practice, he joined a group of small companies engaged in oil exploration abroad. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1970 as the candidate of New York&;s Conservative Party. He failed of reelection; but he has since served as an undersecretary of state in the Reagan administration, president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich, Germany, and, most recently, as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He retired in 2000, and he and his wife now live in Sharon, Connecticut.